RIP: Reynolds Price (1933-2011)

North Carolina writer Reynolds Price died today, from a heart attack, just before his 77th birthday, according to a Duke University press release and the Charlotte Observer. Here's the birthday post we had for Price at DS,TU in 2007.

13 February: The Beating of Isaac Woodard (1946)

[Image description: black-and-white photo of Isaac Woodard, seated, wearing a uniform and large round sunglasses. A woman is standing next to the chair, with her arm behind Woodard.]


What does it cost to be a Negro? In Aiken, South Carolina it cost a man his eyes.

--Orson Welles, in a September 1946 radio broadast

On this date in 1946, Isaac Woodard (1919-1992) was on a long bus ride from Georgia, returning to his family in North Carolina. Woodard was African-American, and grew up in the South, but he was also in uniform, freshly discharged from the US Army with medals earned for his wartime service. Surely, he could use the next rest stop without any fuss?

The driver allowed him to do that; but the driver also contacted police, who took Woodard off the bus at the next stop in Batesburg, South Carolina. After being removed from the bus, Sgt. Woodard was beaten with nightsticks and taken to the town jail. The next morning, Woodard woke up blind. Both of his eyes had been irreparably damaged in a beating that he didn't remember clearly. He was released from jail, brain-injured and blind, and received no medical care for at least two days after the event. His family reported him missing after three weeks; only then was he identified and moved to an Army hospital for care.

Woodard's story was publicized by the NAACP; Orson Welles called for the punishment of the policemen involved; a federal case was brought, but the chief of police was cleared of all charges. Although he was not blinded during his war service, the Blinded Veterans Association made an exception in his case, and welcomed him as a member. Woodard moved to New York after he recovered, and died in a military hospital there in 1992.

The abuse faced by Woodard and other returning soldiers was part of President Truman's reason for issuing Executive Order 9981, desegregating the armed forces. Woody Guthrie wrote the song "The Blinding of Isaac Woodard" to retell the story in ballad form at a concert in support of Woodard held in New York City in 1946 (also featuring Cab Calloway, Billie Holliday, Milton Berle, and Orson Welles).

Want to teach about the Woodard case? Documents related to his story are collected online here, courtesy of Andrew H. Myers, for classroom use.

Further reading:

Robert F. Jefferson, "'Enabled Courage': Race, Disability, and Black World War II Veterans in Postwar America," The Historian 65(5)(2003): 1102-1124.

Kari Frederickson, "'The Slowest State' and 'Most Backward Community': Racial Violence in South Carolina and Federal Civil-Rights Legislation, 1946-1948," South Carolina Historical Magazine 98(2)(1997): 177-202.

Radio interview with Burch & Joyner

Disability history on your iPod--it's a click, drag, and drop away. North Carolina Public Radio aired a nice long half-hour interview today with Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner, authors of Unspeakable: A Life Story of Junius Wilson (UNC Press 2007). It's online here.

Long Road Home: Celebrating Olmstead in Georgia

Cindy Sue of Six Almost Seven has details about the celebration for the 8th anniversary of the Olmstead decision in Georgia--they're looking for participants and volunteers. If you can be in Atlanta on Friday June 22, check it out. As one component of the day's events, Endeavor Freedom will be filming stories for preservation in the Georgia Disability Rights Exhibit. That makes so much sense. If you already have activists and survivors gathered to rally and celebrate, it's a perfect opportunity to record the stories that would otherwise be lost.

May 11: Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874)

Asian history, Southern history, disability history--how about all three? On this date in 1811 (by tradition), conjoined twins Chang and Eng were born in the province of Samutsongkram, Siam (now Thailand), to ethnic Chinese parents. The boys' bodies were connected at the chest, by a band of cartilage that joined their sternums; they had two livers, but the organs were fused. When they were teenagers, a British merchant hired them from their mother for a world tour. They parted ways with their managers, after a few years, and took control of their own exhibition schedule. Thus (unlike many human attractions of the day) they made a fortune. They returned to the exhibition circuit whenever they needed more money quickly. Their billing, "The Siamese Twins," became a popular term for all conjoined twins.

With their fortune, they bought a plantation (and slaves) in North Carolina, adopted the surname Bunker, and in 1843 married local sisters Adelaide and Sallie Yates. Over the next twenty years, Chang and Adelaide had ten children together; Eng and Sallie had eleven or twelve children together (sources vary). Their children were often included in publicity photos such as the image above; in part because they too were a "curiosity," in a time and place when Asian facial features were seldom seen, and in part because they were part of the men's display of "normality" and masculinity. Chang and Eng Bunker died a few hours apart in the winter of 1874, at the age of 63.

The twins' tour routine included a medical examination in each town--in part as publicity, and in part to counter charges of fakery. So there's an extensive archival record of newspaper accounts and medical opinions on the men's bodies. There's also a small collection of their papers in the Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina...and a popular exhibit about Chang & Eng at the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy NC (an unexpected juxtaposition, perhaps, but it's near the site of their homes, and they're buried in a churchyard nearby). Like many large Southern families, the descendants of the Bunkers now hold annual gatherings in Mount Airy.

In 1999, a bronze monument to "In-Jan" (as they're known) was dedicated near their birthplace in Thailand. And in 2001, a bridge in Surry County NC was named the Eng and Chang Bunker Memorial Bridge in their honor--because it is a "twin bridge."

Image above: A well-known c1865 portrait of the Bunkers, seated between their wives; two boys (Patrick and Albert) are seated at their fathers' feet. The photo was taken by Civil War photographer Mathew Brady.

For further reading:

Alice Domurat Dreger, One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal (Harvard University Press 2005).

Alice Domurat Dreger, "Jarring Bodies: Thoughts on the Display of Unusual Anatomies," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 43(2)(2000): 161-172.

Margrit Shildrick, "Unreformed Bodies: Normative Anxieties and the Denial of Pleasure," Women's Studies 34(April-June 2005): 327-344.

Allison Pingree, "America's 'United Siamese Brothers': Chang and Eng and Nineteenth Century Ideologies of Democracy and Domesticity," in J. J. Cohen, ed., Monster Theory, Reading Culture (Minnesota University Press 1996).

Mara and Benoni Buck of Jamestown, Virginia

Who was first to say or do something? It's not as easy a question to answer as you'd think--historians tend to avoid declaring "the first" unless the situation is extremely clearcut. A simple enough question like (for example) "who was Canada's first woman doctor?" can have several possible answers, depending mainly on what you mean by Canadian and doctor. A few months ago, blogger Natalie Bennett pointed to an essay on Comment is Free by David McKie, exploring the hazards journalists face in trumpeting "the first." McKie even used the example of the "first" disabled Member of Parliament, which is a distinction claimed for several men, but without a single best answer. But, Blue has set "Firsts" as the theme for the next edition of the Disability Blog Carnival. So, cautiously, I'll share a first from US disability history. Probably a first. As far as I know....

Mara Buck (1611-c1655?) and Benoni Buck (1616-39) were the first people with presumed developmental/cognitive/learning disabilities to be described in English documents as being born in America. They were two of the children of Richard Buck (1582-1624), a preacher at the Jamestown colony in Virginia (celebrating the 400th anniversary of its founding this month). While still back in England, they say Richard Buck knew William Shakespeare. He was part of an infamous crossing of the Atlantic that was marooned on Bermuda for nine months. He performed the wedding between John Rolfe and Pocahontas. This was no obscure guy. Richard Buck died the same year as his wife, and left a large plantation and minor children, so there were inevitably legal battles within the estate--and it is in those records that we find Benoni described as an "idiot," and Mara as "very dull in taking her lerninge." Benoni Buck lived under the care of guardians, who apparently drew funds from Benoni's inheritance until he died at age 23. Mara Buck eventually married a Mr. Adkins, but her competence to enter into a marriage contract had earlier challenged in court after a suitor attempted to kidnap her from her guardians.

Note that this first record of developmental disability in America isn't a medical record, or an educational record--before cognitive disability was closely explored in those contexts, the legal assessment of incompetence was the most precise and socially consequential. Also note that it often takes a crisis--a crime, a death--to catch any mention of such lives as Benoni Buck's in the net of historical evidence.

Further Reading:
Seth Mallios, "Archaeological Excavations at 44JC568, The Reverend Richard Buck Site" (Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities 1999): online here.

R. Neugebauer, "Exploitation of the Insane in the New World: Benoni Buck, the First Reported Case of Mental Retardation in the American Colonies," Archives of General Psychiatry 44(5)(1987): 481-483. Abstract here.

Irene W. and Frederick Hecht, "Mara and Benomi [sic] Buck: Familial Mental Retardation in Colonial Jamestown," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 28(2)(April 1973): 171-176.

Mark your calendars...

Some upcoming events worth noting if you can get to New York, Portland, Asheville or Chicago:

2 May 2007: The latest installment in the disTHIS! Film Series showcases local New York City filmmakers on disability topics. They'll be screening and discussing three documentaries (One Night Sit, We Also Dance, and Spit it Out) at the Firehouse that night; for more details check the disTHIS! website.

18-20 May 2007: The Disability Arts and Culture Project is proud to present Portland, Oregon's second Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival. From the website:

The newly formed Disability Art and Culture Project merges disability studies with performance in its second annual festival. Disability Pride promotes the idea that people with disabilities deserve to be celebrated, their stories need to be told and their contributions to the community at large need to be recognized.

The festival brings together dancers and performance artists for three days of film screenings, live performance and workshops to celebrate the work of regional artists and to provide the general public with an alternative view of the lives of people with disabilities.

Check the website for more details about the program. It's all happening at the Central Lutheran Church, 1820 NE 21st Ave, Portland; price is $10 per evening (workshops free!).

E-mail: kafia@prodigy.net or Call 503-522-5218 for more details and accommodations. They're also looking for volunteers to work at the festival.

2 June 2007: The Southeastern Disability Culture Festival will be held on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and feature "dance troupes, spoken word, live music, gallery art, kid-friendly activities, workshops, great food, crafts, fun vendors, photography, and an after-party," including "crip hip-hop artist Leroy Moore (shown at right) and folk musician Jim Whalen." It's hosted by the North Carolina Youth Leadership Network and the North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities. (There's no website for the festival that I can find, but I'll testify that if you're going to be in the South in the summertime, Asheville is a good place to be.)

21 July 2007: 4th Annual Disability Pride Parade: Disabled and Proud 2007 in Chicago IL. Individuals and groups intending to participate should register now at the website. The parade is part of a weekend of festivities, including an open mike poetry slam.

February 1: Reynolds Price (b. 1933)

Your chance of rescue from any despair lies, if it lies anywhere, in your eventual decision to abandon the death watch by the corpse of your old self and to search out a new inhabitable body.

--Reynolds Price

North Carolina writer, Duke English professor, former Rhodes scholar Reynolds Price was born on this date in 1933, in Macon NC. He's been using a wheelchair since the mid-1980s, when he survived a spinal cancer that was considered terminal by his doctors. His A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing (Athenaeum reprint 1994; also available as an audiobook) is a cancer memoir about the spiritual and psychological aspects of his recovery and pain management; Feasting the Heart: Fifty-two Commentaries for the Air (Scribner 2000) compiles many of his NPR essays, including several on disability ("Wheelchair Travel," "Eye Level to a Wheelchair," "The Last Great Weeper").

May 5: Happy Birthday, William McTell

Just in case your tastes don't run to Dutch recorder music, there's another festive music opportunity with a disability history tie-in on the weekend of May 20-21: The 12th Annual Blind Willie McTell Blues Festival, in Thomson, Georgia, named in honor of blues guitarist William Samuel "Blind Willie" McTell, born 5 May 1901 (or maybe 1898?), in Thomson. Read more about the musician (who also recorded as "Blind Sammie") here, and here. (Or maybe just listen to the lyrics to Bob Dylan's song, "Blind Willie McTell.") There's a brand-new box-set of his recordings coming out too.